Amazon drops encryption from Fire devices

March 0805:232016

Retailing giant Amazon confirmed Friday it removed local encryption from its Kindle Fire devices, as it throws support to Apple in its fight over an encrypted iPhone.

“In the fall when we released Fire OS 5, we removed some enterprise features that we found customers weren’t using,” said Amazon in a statement. “All Fire tablets’ communication with Amazon’s cloud meet our high standards for privacy and security including appropriate use of encryption.”

First reported by Motherboard, Amazon dropped encryption from its Kindle Fire devices with the launch of its latest operating system, Fire OS 5. The change means users can either stick with the older software or update and lose encryption on their data. As the report points out, the removal of encryption has sparked debate on the Amazon forums.

On Thursday, Amazon joined 14 other companies in a joint court filing in support of Apple’s fight against the FBI over an encrypted iPhone used by one of the killers in the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings. The other companies involved in the coalition include Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, Mozilla, Snapchat, Box, Slack and Yahoo.